Extended interview: Matt Stevens

Matt Stevens is a 21-year-old Tennessee resident who says his workplace cut his hours to prevent having to pay him insurance, leaving him looking for a second job to supplement his income.

Tell us about when you first learned about your hours being cut at your restaurant job.

I was actually living in an apartment with one of my buddies, and that's when we started getting our hours cut. They started hiring new people to fill our hours and that's when everybody was talking about it, how they had to offer the insurance if you're going to have over 30 hours, so now its only 29 hours or less.

What has that done to your lifestyle?

It's caused me to get another job and work seven days a week. It's hard because I have two jobs, so one might try to call me in when I'm at another, or they might want me to work on an extra day where I work on the weekends at my restaurant job, or while I'm mowing during the mowing season before I go back to the winter at the restaurant. So it's sometimes difficult, because you have two jobs wanting you to do two things and you can't. It gets pretty hard sometimes.

What about the apartment?

I live at home with my parents now, but that comes with working seven days a week. You don't really have much time to do anything really because you're always working, or trying to go to bed to be up early for work the next day, and at school at night. It gets tough sometimes.

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